Your editorial applauding the adoption of the Common Core curriculum is off base for several key reasons. Successful national standards should meet certain minimum criteria: they should be evidence-based, extensively field-tested, developmentally appropriate, and generated by actual educators. The Common Core curriculum fails on all these points.

Most of the â€śevidenceâ€ť cited by Common Coreâ€™s creators was generated by the curriculumâ€™s sponsors.

Unlike Coloradoâ€™s CSAP, the Common Core standards recommend testing as early as kindergarten, drawing the ire of more than 500 early childhood professionals who, in a 2010 joint statement, lambasted the standards for contradicting current research in child development.

And the committees that drafted the English language arts standards have been widely criticized for containing no actual educators, at either elementary school or college level.

These deeply flawed standards are not the answer to our countryâ€™s education woes.

Eve Cohen, Denver

This letter was published in the Sept. 3 edition.

One argument The Denver Post uses for its support of the Common Core is that these standards will result in a lower number of students taking remedial courses in college.

Colorado has been down this path before. CSAP began in 1997 with the same faulty premise as Common Core: that student performance could improve through rigorous testing. In 2004, according to the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, 30 percent of college freshmen needed remediation. In 2010, this percentage remained the same. Clearly, the implementation of multiple-choice tests has had little effect on college readiness.

Advocates have faith that these standards will improve instruction, but the proven effect of standardized tests is that teachers focus on teaching to the test, resulting in students adept at the process of elimination but ill-equipped at problem solving. We need more than faith-based school reform.

Don Batt, Denver

This letter was published in the Sept. 3 edition.

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This is classic of the “new age of education wannabes” who disrespect the profession of teachers, and believe in the axiom “anyone can teach.” This led to standardized testing such as CSAP, which was create primarily by people in business, and whom former Gov. Owens failed when tested after promoting it. Wannabes across the nation created standardized tests under the guise to prove U.S. education if failing, but the real agenda was to undermine teacher unions and make teachers a minimum wage job, anyone can do, as long as they follow business curriculum. This is just another example of wannabes trying to alter our education system without the use of professional educators.

tomfromthenews

You are so RIGHT ON, TH. The worst teachers I encountered in my 28 years were the ones who simply took the printed curriculum and plugged it in, following a teach-by-numbers approach without much real passion or expertise. The new curriculum writers (for example, they call it “Cornerstone Genres” in Jeffco secondary English) think they have simplified and strengthened instruction when, in fact, I found that my real passion for teaching was being usurped by calendars and “team meetings”. Luckily, it was introduced during my final year, so I got out just in time.

Teaching kids how to do well on tests and complete Project X by the predetermined date is not the way to create scholars and problem solvers.

primafacie

Then perhaps it’s being done backward. Instead of teaching kids to do well on the test, teach the material — or, better, the skills to figure out the material — and then test to determine what they learned.

peterpi

It used to be done that way,
But CSAP has become all-important. “Everything” depends on CSAP scores: Whether a school stays open, how much state funding it receives, etc.
Curriculum is now driven by whether it will make students give better answers to CSAP.
Further, my understanding is absentee kids hurt CSAP scores (they get a score of “0”), disabled kids hurt CSAP scores. I did miserably on timed tests. Why? Cerebral Palsy plays havoc with my manual dexterity, and think about how much manual dexterity plays a role in marking tests — or writing answers to essay questions. Yes, primafacie, even fill in the circle multiple-choice tests. I had a 25% difference on two IQ tests 3 months apart, where the major difference was, one test I answered orally, the other test I answered with a #2 pencil. I had one teacher in high school who grapsed that fact, and we made special arrangements for his tests which were all-essay.
CSAP is one-size-fits-all.

toohip

Well said, peter. And it’s not just CP that affects the playing field of standardized testing. When parents are opting their kids out of standardized testing, which about every school system allows since they have no weight on grades or direct learning, why put your kid through this? I know a DPS teacher at a middle school, who say they hold “CSAP parties” and give away prizes to kids to get them pumped up to take the test. Why? So the teachers keep their jobs, get their pay raises, and the school doesn’t close. That’s the environment we’ve created where teachers are dependent on how their kids perform on a voluntary test, that even the Governor can’t pass.

The value of a genuine “good teacher” is immeasurable, as is many of the qualities of such a teacher to be identified through some form of personality or testing. It takes performance, and NO ONE knows that “good teacher” better than their peers. Not the parents. Parents like teachers who communicate and praise their kids. That’s easy. But the 2nd grade teachers knows the kindergarden and ECE teachers who prepare those kids entering their classroom, and who are the teachers who prepare their kids best.

tomfromthenews

Well, duh. This is what I was allowed to do for the first 20 years of my career. Kids flourished and we all learned together. After excessively restrictive standards and CSAP, it became a different story. Kids don’t know how to think and problem-solve as well as they used to.

toohip

That’s all I hear from my newly retired teacher-wife, and my daughter who teaches now. . .it’s all about meetings and grandiose ideology from the business-orientated “downtown” of DPS. Bennett and Boasburg started a “business orientated structure” that continues today. There is more overhead in the form of program manager than there are teachers. Principals used to be true leaders, who were visionaries and knew how to lead. Now it’s just a career promotion for a teacher with only a few years to get a pay raise. No principal should be allowed to hold this position without 10-15 years of successful teaching experience. The principal at my wife’s/daughter’s schools has about 6 years of teaching experience ins a small town environment. The position of vice principal is nothing more than a “heavy” to control discipline, and in one of the most non-hispanic, upscale white neighborhoods, they insisted on going ELL because there is a minority number of latino kids, who though they speak english as a second language, are forced to hire spanish-speaking teachers. Another big distraction for intended good cause, gone awry.

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